Sometimes the Dragon Wins

By William Walling

Chin Zhonghua Renmin Gonghehuo, the Peoples Republic of China, achieves a late 21st century technological triumph with a “Great Leap Upward,” the deployment of a “space elevator” rising from an equatorial mountain peak in Kalimantan to an enormous microgravity production satellite in geosynchronous orbit, and on starward to a spacecraft inertial launch and retrieval complex. This radical, innovative system permits the importation of lunar and orbital hard goods at negligible cost, creating economic chaos in world marketplaces. Blackmailed into accepting a “suicide” mission to penetrate the space elevator’s closely guarded secrets and effect temporary sabotage, United Nations intelligence asset Rodolfo Cateel becomes embroiled in the subterfuge of China's counterintelligence director, who convinces China’s hierarchy that economic overkill might end in thermonuclear holocaust and, since system repair and rework are mandatory, arranges an artificial hiatus in operation in order for China to “save face.” Things go awry when a Nipponese double-agent is ordered to do away with Cateel and effect totally destructive sabotage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Walling
• Release date: Jul 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476087030

William Walling

Born at an early age of mixed parents, a man and a woman, early childhood was a disaster; my imaginary playmate would have nothing to do with me, though I myself thought the kid was great. Since then it’s been all downhill. Seriously, a former aerospace engineer with a keen interest in ancient history, classical music and speculative fiction—long jumps in interest, perhaps, but true—I spent decades designing flight systems hardware in Lockeed’s Space System Division, where a career high point was working on a recently declassified, five-year program codenamed AZORIAN that sucessfully retrieved a Soviet naval submarine from the deep Pacific north of Hawaii.

Book preview

Prologue

Lightfooted under mild lunar gravity, a practical nurse bustled into the solarium carrying the pièce de résistance of gifts, a parcel wrapped in silver foil tied with a scarlet ribbon. Not sure if the patient was awake or dozing, she diffidently approached his powered rollabout chair.

Mr. Cateel . . ?

The patient did not stir. Basking in the sunlamp’s artificial radiance clad in a backless gray hospital gown, he had let his lap blanket slip to the floor.

At their first encounter in the ward, the nurse had been startled to hear her halting query in pidgin Tagalog answered in flawless Mandarin. Not knowing what to make of the tall, singularly self-possessed gentleman whose head was swathed in bandages, she decided he had lingered in the solarium longer than was beneficial, but felt it not her place to advise a return to his private room.Mr. Cateel, she repeated more firmly, a package for you.

The patient’s mummy-wrapped head turned slowly.

I don’t . . . faltered the nurse. "It’s, heavy . . . candy, perhaps. Security took the usual precautions, judged it harmless. I thought you might like to —"

Leave it with me, he said testily.

Miffed at his brusque manner after she had sacrificed minutes of her forenoon break to deliver the fancy package, the nurse handed it over, turned on her heel and left the solarium with gliding, disenchanted steps, the soles of her white Uwabaki slippers squeaking on the tiles.

There was no accompanying card, nor was one necessary; a very short list of gifters knew where he’d been sent to recuperate. Caesescu the younger seemed the likeliest, or perhaps General Yee, and possibly even Chairman Li Qin himself. Dismissing the latter guess as farfetched, he slipped a thumbnail under a fold of silver foil, peeled it back. Wrapping and ribbon fluttered to the floor in lunar slow motion. Having neither seen, spoken nor heard a word of English for many months, and had to shift mental gears. Regarding the hardbound volume askance, a soft chuckle issued from deep in his throat. The book’s blood-red dust jacket was emblazoned with a stylized version of the U.N. Intelligence Agency’s helm-and-mace logo, and the title embossed in golden letters:

A Furtive Career

Sir Carlton S. Daniel

He turned the book over, read a short puff describing the author’s meteoric rise from anonymous Cambridge don to UNIA director, and eventual knighthood. A flat photograph captured Sir Carlton half-turned toward the camera, posing beside the lichen-encrusted stone wall at his estate near the Cornish town of Tevistock. The very model of a tweedy country squire, he was pictured bending to pet an intimidated Welsh terrier. Cateel noted with bemused skepticism Daniel’s incongruous, droop-lidded pout of infinite sincerity that looked sharply at odds with his vacuous gaze, suggesting the onset of senility.

He opened the volume at a ribbon someone had inserted, and began skimming the text.

* * *

. . . and whether bogus or genuine, declassified documents identify the asset as Rodolfo Taruc Cateel. Apparently falsifying his age upon enlisting in U.N. Aerospace Forces from poverty-stricken Mindanao, he had seen lunar combat with the 33rd High Rangers during infamous scuffles which, despite moderate casualties on either side, failed to prevent the Peoples Republic of China from industrializing lunar sites in and around the crater Aristarchus, as well as mining rilles in the Prinz region.

Concluding his tour of duty, he opted for honorable discharge when his unit rotated to Sinus Iridum for rest and recreation. He briefly enrolled in a California college, where he proved to be an indifferent student, but nevertheless excelled in the martial arts disciplines, and as an adept came to the attention of an associate professor of linguistics who happened to be in our employ. Casually recruited and rigorously trained, Cateel subsequently engaged in a number of exacting field assignments which must unfortunately remain unsung.

The author came into personal contact with this exceptional asset during a period of severe trial and tribulation for the West. Having observed from afar the decade-long construction of an enormous geosynchronous satellite orbiting above northwestern Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of Borneo, conjecture regarding its purpose and location became rife in the international intelligence community. Satellite surveillance soon unearthed a collateral mystery: a massive construction project of some kind adjacent to the summit of a volcanic mountain peak in Kalimantan dubbed Gebergte Beturan by long-departed Dutch settlers. Rearing a statute mile above the upland rain forest, it was judged no coincidence that the dormant volcano locals knew as Gunung Beturan straddled the equator at precisely the huge orbiting satellite’s substellar point. Shortly Chinese shuttles began resupplying major on-orbit operations of some kind, which of course threw light on the inferred purpose of such a major endeavour.

The notion of achieving facile, economical access to and from low earth orbit via a space elevator linking a point precisely on the equator and a satellite orbiting in dynamic equilibrium had been bruited about in the technical literature for a century and more. Western experts voiced misgivings, citing the monumental engineering obstacles, and insurmountable instability problems" et cetera, to be overcome if such a leviathan construction were to be effectively maintained in situ. Yet the PCR proved these caveats basically inaccurate.

Despite our history of mutual, uneasy enmity, credit must be accorded to the liberated pseudo-Marxist society dwelling on the far side of our beleagured planet. The revamped Artsutanov Satellite looms above Kalimantan today, a pair of tremendous, disc-shaped structures induced to counter-rotate in order to null what is said to be the gyroscopic moment induced by orbiting in consonance with earthspin which would otherwise cause the massive structure to drift toward one of the poles. The open secret of PRC success turned out to be an ultra-lightweight nanotechnology material producible only on-orbit under microgravity, namely carbon-based nanotubes exhibiting phenomenal tensile strength, the product used to fabricate a set of thirty-six-thousand-kilometer-long miracle tethers anchored in a receptacle pit excavated deep within Mt. Beturan’s bowels, which linked the enormous satellite and the ground.

Witnessing completion of this monumental project, the civilized world thrust aside geopolitics momentarily, and lauded with thunderous applause PRC’s extraordinary technological feat, yet in certain quarters regarding it with no small amount of envy mixed with apprehension. When operations began, passenger capsules and freight modules began traversing the quadrate tether system in week-long journeys up to and down from the Artsutanov satellite, as well as to and from the inertial spacecraft launch and retrieval complex situated at the secondary tether set’s starward terminus. A veritable sea of high-efficiency solar energy receptors arrayed to co-orbit with the satellite shunted bountiful gigawattage to the surface, transforming a hitherto lightly populated region of Kalimantan into one of the world’s most power-wealthy communities.

Far too much ink has been spilt concerning the PRC’s brilliant Great Leap Upward blatantly trumpeted as the technological marvel of the third millennium which endowed the capitalistic Communist autocracy with a truly staggering advantage in the exploitation of near-Earth and cislunar space. Envy and apprehension aside, in speaking of the world’s ancient and modern Seven Wonders Artsutanov looms as a monumental triumph of innovative technology, and indisputably puts in the shade trifles such as Egypt’s pyramids, or Lagrangian space habitation macrostructures like Xanadu.

Here in the West, however, the obverse of this bright, shiny Chinese coin soon began corroding, and took on a much more somber hue. The successful deployment of China’s modern day Jacob’s Ladder into the sky created a turnabout loss of face that proved severely jarring in the West. It would be pointless to dwell on the machinations, recriminations, inquiries, table-pounding debates and vituperous denunciations leading to Rodolfo Cateel’s mission assignment. Western noses, already painfully out of joint, were bent further when the PRC’s ruling clique issued a stern caveat, vowing that any attempt to interfere with Artsutanov operations would be met with massive retaliation. This gratuitous threat sharply nettled certain dignitaries responsible for the conduct of national affairs. in the West. Having always abhorred blackmail and blackmailers, the author confesses to numbering himself among the most sharply nettled.

* * *

Muffled laughter issued from beneath the patient’s bandages, turning scattered heads in the solarium. If aware of the curious stares directed his way, Cateel gave no sign.

* * *

An obscure Soviet-era scientist, Yuri Artsutanov, had elaborated upon fanciful speculations about a similar enterprise touched upon in the works of Russia’s legendary innovator and teacher, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, by publishing an advanced space elevator schema in Komsomol’skaya Pravda. If noticed at all in the West, the article was laughingly dismissed, as were other theoretical explorations of the radical concept by Soviet visionaries, including an even less known scientist named Polyakov. During the latter phases of elevator construction, a veritable parade of UNIA assets, in addition to those dispatched by other intel organizations, attempted to penetrate the Artsutanov Satellite. Few returned, and of those who did none had learned anything of lasting significance. Field assets of Asian heritage were seldom used during our own clandestine games with the PRC, and the select few who did were prone to dual, triple and on occasion quadruple allegiances, and never failed to demonstrate a consistent reluctance to part with freedom or their lives in exchange for vital information.

Derogatory to their ethnic strain as it may sound, Filipinos have earned a reputation in some quarters as the world’s greatest thieves. When Rodolfo Cateel was first proposed as the best asset to undertake the job of penetrating Artsutanov, the author believed him rather a dubious choice. On the eve of his penultimate briefing, however, our thinking changed, not so much because of the man himself — muscular and lean, tall for a Filipino, and possessed of remarkable physical presence — but rather due to the acquisition of a trump card involving his personal affairs. As for the asset himself, he and his eventual fate remain enigmatic.

A childish cartoon found crumpled in a wastebasket at the Tokyo safe house where UNIA Asian Section assets were often sequestered prior to field assignments, presumably drawn by Cateel on the eve of his paradrop into Kalimantan, depicted a scaly, fire-breathing monster squatting on its haunches, contentedly picking its dragon’s teeth with a medieval lance, while all about were strewn segments of the knight’s shining armour. Scrawled in Spanish cursive, the caption read,

A veces gana el dragón.

In light of what later transpired, this may be pertinent . . .

* * *

Cateel’s reading was cut short by an officious orderly who approached quietly, switched off the sunlamp and announced with an air of challenge, Therapy now.

The orderly drew back in alarm when the patient, dark eyes burning through slits in the layers of bandage, informed him in staccato Mandarin of an indecent act he could perform with his therapy, introducing into the indictment scurrilous flaws attributable to the young man’s antecedents, contemporaries, and prospective progeny.

The orderly fled in search of reinforcements. Without bothering to retrieve the fallen blanket, Cateel laid the gift book in his lap, energized the chair and rolled out of the solarium, guiding it to a slideramp at the corridor’s far end. Riding upward two levels, he found the medicenter’s small observation rotunda unoccupied.

Brooding in a silence broken only by the faint susurration of air issuing from life support louvers, he gazed across the sere, desiccated field of rubble flooring the walled plain of Mare Crisium, now bathed in earthlit refulgence. Fascinated by the stark desolation, especially the mystical, enchanting way earthlight delicately silvered the gray-scale wasteland pocked with boulders and craterlets, etching inky, sharply defined shadows. Above the distant ringwall’s serrated rim, the three-quarter marble of Earth hung suspended like a blue-and-silver Christmas tree bauble. A typhoon’s snowy whorl marred the Indian Ocean’s cobalt sheen.

Slumped in the rollabout chair, he studied the lunarscape with unseeing eyes, reflecting on places and faces from the past, recalling victories won, defeats endured. Idly fingering the gifted book’s gaudy red dust jacket, he briefly reviewed the kaleidoscope of personalities and events leading up to the Artsutanov mission, and the sour note upon which it had begun.

He neither acknowledged their presence, nor protested, when the orderly and a hulking companion ran him to ground and escorted him back to the his temporary prison, a characterless, antiseptic private hospital room.

ONE

For an Asian hooker, the Thai woman struck Cateel as all bu senile — late-twenties, he judged, and inclining toward plumpness. Watching her dress by not looking directly at her, he speculated about how and why she had eluded Bangkok’s thriving sex industry. When she was ready to leave, he made a point of holding the door for her. His reward was a smile as plastic and devoid of warmth as had been her seismic performance during the act of passion.

Walking off the decrepit Empire Docks at sundown, he could not have imagined compromising his cover by inviting a woman, or for that matter anyone, into his squalid hotel room. It had been a spur of the moment impulse, and act born of protracted loneliness, sired by acute biological insistence.

Instead of traipsing down the hall to the third-rate hotel’s communal showers, he ran tepid, rust-flecked water into a chipped porcelain basin, gave himself a sponge bath and then sat on the lumpy, narrow cot masquerading as a bed, letting Singapore’s sultry night air dry him. The room’s other Kafkaesque furnishings consisted of a frayed wicker chair with wobbly legs, a battered mahogany night stand, and an ancient holovision tank that offered fuzzy 3D images in odd psychedelic colors. He switched on the holo out of boredom, surfed the overabundance of satellite channels until coming across a news anchor babbling in Chinese.

Fluent in Mandarin, though much less so in Cantonese, he also spoke Tagalog, Spanish, English, and had a smattering of Japanese. The commentator soberly announced the death toll in Mumbai’s latest wave of food riots, adding that dozens more had been injured.

What else is new? he thought. After further haphazard surfing, he learned that with but a single dissenting vote the U.N. Department of Environment & Population’s nine-member Triage Committee had downgraded the status of Chad. Emergency grain shipments to the stricken nation had ceased, and U.N. Peacekeeping Forces had interdicted a large segment of the people, effectively sentencing them to extinction. The commentator droned on, condemning the duplicity of calling triage population control, twice referring to it as "genocide, and vehemently decried U.N. insensitivity to the abysmal human condition prevalent in Chad and elsewhere.

The same idle question occurred to him: What else is new? Crossing his arms over his muscular chest, he drowsily kneaded shoulder muscles sore from another day of dawn-to-dusk drudgery. He reached for the remote controller, preparing to snap off the erratically functioning holovision tank, just as someone off-camera handed the newscaster a note.

Ladies and gentlemen, the energized anchor said hurriedly, in a bulletin just in from Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency reports a precedent-shattering trade conference is scheduled to be held in space. Delegates from respective Pan-Asian governments, and from portions of the Pacific Rim, will be hosted by China in an extended conference aboard the Artsutanov Satellite to discuss and hopefully resolve economic disparities allegedly created by the PRC’s accused ‘dumping’ of drastically underpriced hard goods on world marketplaces. The delegates are to be flown to Kalimantan and lofted to orbit from the space elevator’s Mount Beturan ground station.

His mien serious, the newscaster continued, calling it a huge understatemen to say this announcement came as a surprise, since up to now every attribute and detail of space elevator operations had been cloaked in closely guarded secrecy. A break with established policy of this magnitude, he insisted, could not help but capture the attention of the entire global business community, which in recent years had suffered from drastic and dramatic economic woes . . ."

And that, thought Cateel, definitely was new.

Heavy-lidded, his thoughts turned inward. He clicked off the holotank, tugged the beaded string dangling from light fixture pendant from the mottled ceiling, and sank back against the pillow. Sunrise would bring another day of sweat and toil when some nameless freighter tied-up wharfside and prepared to offload. Dawn would bring a reprise of today, yesterday, far too many yesterdays. The only other thing tomorrow would bring was a freshet of anxiety over whether the target would risk putting in an appearance.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, he thought sourly, but never today . . !

* * *

Hiding in plain sight among the group of day laborers awaiting a work call, Cateel hunkered in the lee of a run-down warehouse, one of many lining the old Empire Docks, where only aging rust-buckets and tramp steamers any longer tied up. He hoped this would finally be the day, and if so speculated about how long the target might risk exposure. The last report from a Macau informant had inferred that someone or something aboard a Singapore-bound coastwise freighter had been judged worthy of Wladislaw Caesescu’s personal attention. Cut off by necessity from direct contact with that source, UNIA’s chief of station had tried but failed to learn of a reason for the delay, a fact sorely displeasing Cateel; it forced him to endure an added week or more of dock-walloping labor to maintain his cover.

All that was needed to kick off the strike would be Caesescu’s appearance. Set up this neatly, pinned between harbor and the row of warehouses, it would be child’s play to eliminate the aged septuagenarian spymaster. That, however, was absolutely the last thing UNIA desired. London had made a very strong point of insisting that the old man be taken alive and unharmed so that his brain could be picked synapse by synapse, neuron by neuron. A perpetual thorn in the agency’s side, in recent years Caesescu had worked exclusively for the Chinese, although to him loyalty was beyond doubt a pluperfectly intangible commodity. A believer in equal opportunity employment, he remained loyal to whoever he agreed to serve, invariably the highest of high-bidders. After his mind had been emptied, the legendary espionage icon would most likely be traded to Beijing in exchange for two or more UNIA stray lambs.

Ensuring Caesescu’s survival was more than a nuisance factor, however. It trebled or quadrupled the coming strike’s difficulty, making success a dicey, touch-and-go proposition.

Exchanging friendly badinage in pidgin Tamil with the Sri Lankan stevedore hunkered next to him, he bummed an illegal Turkish cigarette, and stiffened while lighting it, jolted by a surge of adrenaline at sight of an electric jitney pulling up farther down the deserted wharf. Thinking one or more of Caesescu’s associates might have arrived to meet the target, he prayed that the slow-paced days of sweat and frustration were ending at last. The rehearsed scenario had automatically played over and over in his mind. Here in the tropics, a wide-brimmed straw Panama would no doubt be covering the renowned espionage genius’ shaven pate. He would of course be accompanied by the usual bodyguards, yet that shouldn’t hinder the operation, or alter the outcome. Any hired safekeepers would be taken out quickly, efficiently.

His sense of anticipation mounted while studying the parked runabout, abruptly faltered and turned into a pang of disappointment when a familiar figure emerged from the vehicle. Even at that distance, his control officer, Patel, was easy to recognize. Cateel tried to imagine why the senior Pakistani asset would dare to compromise the operation by making contact here on the wharf, certainly not to alert him, not when his hand-picked team was poised to move, nerves at hair-trigger, weapons locked and loaded. Looking straight ahead, he allowed peripheral vision to track the bearded gentleman casually saunter along the wharf’s fender. Patel halted between a pair of docked vessels directly across from the warehouse, rested one hand on a bollard andn stared out to sea.

Cateel rose, dropped the cigarette in a puddle and shuffled through the warm, persistent drizzle to a point within earshot of Patel. Standing at the fender, he unzipped his soiled dungarees and urinated into Keppel Harbor.

Far across the roadstead, looming through the light morning rain, the nebulous whalebacks of Pulau Brani and Pulau Blakang Mati Islands formed semi-protective ramparts against occasional high seas pounding onshore from the Singapore Strait. The low, gray silhouette of a supertanker rode through the chop beyond the harbor, escorted by a rakish frigate guarding it against increasingly frequent energy piracy. Laden with perhaps a million metric tonnes of liquified coal or natural gas, the tanker was bound for the fortified energy storage complex on Pulau Bukum Island.

Cateel waited, annoyed at the way his control officer’s silence persisted. If the balloon was about to go up, Patel would have rushed to meet Singapore’s psychotically humorless chief of station waiting in the nearby Singapore Docks & Harbour Board offices on the upper floor of a glass-and-steel highrise rearing in the direction of the Main Wharf, where modern cargo-container vessels loaded and offloaded.

Standing at the wharf’s fender like a gawking tourist scanning the seagirt horizon, Patel’s head didn’t turn when in a stage whisper he said, Library, now,

"What do you —?"

No questions. Go! was the other’s whispered command.

That’s insane!

On your way! Comes from the top.

Before Cateel could offer a further objection, Patel wheeled and with leisurely grace strolled back toward the jitney.

The urge to kill seething inside him, Cateel trudged back, passed between warehouses. The idiots! he thought. More than one head would roll over this craziness. Or maybe not. Lacking some inarguable reason, a seasoned pro like Patel would never compromise his point man. Not now, never with the operation’s clock ticking, and maybe about to strike midnight. Had some hitherto unknown reason to abort come to light? Or had the big brains in London gotten cold feet? Either possibility seemed unlikely, and yet . . .

Torn between a strong urge to ignore the directive, yet knowing he had no choice but to comply, he realized questioning the motive would be futile. In issuing the commandment, his control officer had taken an inordinate risk by messaging him on the wharf, so something of paramount importance must have caused the operation to be scrubbed, but even so . . .

Long, unhappy strides carried him away from the wharf.

* * *

Singapore’s National Museum and Library occupied a prominent niche in Stamford Road, not far from Raffles Place. A midweek change in the designated trysting spot was also moderately troubling; a specific confessional in St. Andrews Anglican Cathedral had been the current week’s designated site, not the library.

Feigning moderate drunkenness, he raised his arm and whistled up a cruising electric jitney. The Sikh cabbie dropped him off on a side street three blocks short of his objective. Force of habit made him think about adopting the normal precaution of choosing a circuitous route, then doubling back through alleys and side streets. If he’d grown a tail, he decided, he was angry enough over the abort to cut it off.

His dungarees blue-splotched from the incessant drizzle, hands callused, the cuticles around his fingernails cracked day after day of wrenching physical labor, he realized how out of place he looked climbing the library steps, and lowered his gaze as if in self-conscious humility. Pushing his way inside, he soon learned the chief of station was not in the highrise near the Main Wharf. Seated at a table in the main reading room, he seemed to be idly leafing through a quarto-sized pictorial volume highlighting Singapore’s checkered history. He did not look up when Cateel paused, selected a volume at random from the shelf, and drew out a chair diagonally across the long mahogany table. The chief of station yawned, politely covered his mouth with the back of one hand, and in a low, barely audible voice said, You’re recalled.

Why?

Never mind, insisted the other. Comes straight from The Man.

The portly middle-aged gentleman casually checked his wrist chronometer, closed his book and left it on the table to wander among the stacks, stopping now and then to inspect titles. Not once during their brief encounter had he lifted his eyes, looked directly at Cateel.

Stewing impotently over the casual, unbelievable order that at one stroke wiped out almost a month of difficult, potentially dangerous work, Rudy sat quietly to let his blood pressure subside during the prescribed ten minute interval between departures. He quit the library in a black, despondent frame of mind, and walked the twenty-odd blocks to the sleazy hotel room to rid himself of excess nervous energy.

Using a straight razor — an heirloom gifted by his grandfather — he shaved a five-day growth of stubble, donned a navy blue silk shirt, a neutral gray, wrinkle-proof tropical weave suit, then quickly tossed other oddments of clothing and personal effects into a cheap plastic overnighter, all the luggage he ever carried on a field assignment, and searched every corner of the dreary room, assuring himself nothing would be overlooked. Leaving the door ajar, he ignored the cranky elevator, descended the dilapidated rear fire stairs and hailed a cruising electric taxi.

Fifty minutes later he checked in at the Pacific Basin Airlines counter in the terminal of Singapore’s Paya Lebar Airport. The short-haul airline was wholly owned by UNIA; neither a reservation nor ticket were needed.

* * *

Do you have him? asked Dr. Giovanni John Pastoria.

Vetted by Nipponese intelligence agency to assume the identity of former industrial tycoon Hideko Matsuda, the impeccably clad gentleman exuded dignity. He bent to more closely examine the holographic and digital photos on the teakwood desk in Pastoria’s office, then straightened and tapped his temple meaningfully. I have him here.

A curt nod. Good. The director’s overdue. Let’s get these pics back in Cateel’s folder.

May I take a flat photograph with me.

Sorry, Mr. Matsuda. You’ll carry only what will be strapped around you at the airport in Pontianak.

The purported ex-business magnate’s eyes narrowed, but his stolid expression remained unchanged. Packing explosives on one’s person is not a healthy exercise.

Gelignite’s totally safe, assured the UNIA technical consultant. Without a detonator, you can safely play catch with plastique, mold it, do whatever you wish with it.

I’m aware of that, assured the hastily recruited senior intelligence asset. Inadverntent detonation is no concern, but the Chinese rarely indulge in compassion. Should things go awry, a detonator could be inserted, nature allowed to take its course.

Pastoria hid his discomfiture behind a bold statement. A sublime reason for not allowing things to go wrong.

This man, said the other, indicating a photograph of sober, unsmiling Cateel, looks too young and inexperienced for such a complex assignment.

"Pictures can be deceptive. I’ve dealt with him before several exacting assignments. He’s accomplished, versatile, very fit. Guessing his age is next to impossible.

Never, remarked the faux Matsuda, have I encountered a trustworthy Filipino.

For some reason miffed by the remark, Dr. Pastoria spent a moment extolling Cateel’s ability. Cataloging a pair of key assignments, he worked hard to sound convincing.

By agreeing to place one’s life in the balance, said the other, it seems only proper to question all facets of the proposed endeavor. To me, the individual you glibly call praiseworthy is a cipher, an unknown quantity. His presence aboard the satellite, should he accomplish the miracle of living to reach it, can do no less than compound the hazards, which already strike me as more than sufficient. Adding another is not to my liking.

Irked at finding himself on the defensive, Pastoria qualified his rationale, insisting things had come together far too quickly. Shortly after the announcement, we sat down and brainstormed the mission scenario during one sleepless, sixteen-hour session. The discussion went round and round, back and forth, for and against participating until finally everyone figuratively scratched his head, threw in the towel —

The towel . . ? Matsuda’s brow wrinkled.

Sorry, a figure of speech. We had, uh . . . more or less given up on inventing some practical method of inserting our man and the explosives aboard Artsutanov. The session had begun breaking up when Howard Baste, our field operations director, learned from a . . . Well, a contact that you’d been selected to represent Nippon at the trade conference.

The gentleman posing as Hideko Matsuda blinked, solemnly digested the disclosure.

Director Daniel himself, added Pastoria, made a snap decision at long range to greenlight Baste’s proposal. He here expressly to brief you in person, and plans to sit in on Cateel’s ultimate briefing. Pastoria eyed the other keenly. "Mr. Matsuda, let me clarify something. Our man has to be told your cover name in order to make contact, but absolutely nothing else, including your appearance. That way, it would be impossible for him to compromise you or your role even if he wanted to, and he has the best imaginable reason for not wanting to do that. I’ll vouch for his competence personally if it’s of any comfort."

The picture of stoic self-restraint, Katsugi Miura, the Nipponese asset’s actual name, silently reflected on the previous evening’s intense briefing in Kobe. Ichiro Tomono and his minions at the Ministry of Justice, overjoyed to learn of UNIA’s intention to supply the explosives gratis, had engaged in a heated discussion, and eventually settled on on a radical course of action. During the ride to the helipad, and jetcopter flight to Tokyo, Tomono had finished counseling his star asset by telling him little effort would be required to play the part of a once wealthy captain of industry. As Nippon’s official delegate, Katsugi, you’ll remain aloof, above mundane considerations until deciding which of the proposed scenarios is most practical, in other words precisely as the authentic gentleman in question would have done.

Miura’s eyes, the color and texture of obsidian marbles, glistened with banked fires of satisfaction. Nodding curtly, as if Dr. Pastoria had settled all of his reservations and doubts with regard to the prospective operation. Lifting the flat photographs and holographs one at a time, he glanced incuriously at each in turn, passed it to the UNIA technical consultant.

Hearing a stir in the corridor, Pastoria jammed the sheaf of photos into Cateel’s bulging folder and dropped into its niche the secure file. He punched in the fireproof cabinet’s cipher combination, and turned to open the office door.

The fruity baritone of UNIA’s chief executive sounded overloud from the hall. . . . a beastly traffic muddle it is, forever will be. Tokyo-Yokohama enjoys the most hellish balls-up of motor cars, buses and lorries in the civilized world. It might well be called Gridlock City.

* * *

Cheeks and generous nose rouged by the brisk wintry weather outdoors, Carlton Daniel loomed in the doorway. Ah, there you are, John. Doffing his tailored cashmere topcoat and woolen scarf, he handed the garments to Pastoria, waxed his hands to warm them. Apologies for the delay.The speeches dragged on interminably, and the drive here which should’ve taken only minutes kept us snarled another half-hour. While grumbling, Daniel had ben appraising the broad-shouldered, dapper gentleman standing beside Pastoria.

Dipping his head deferentially, the supposed former tycoon announced himself as Hideko Matsuda. To meet you is a genuine pleasure, Mr. Dirctor.

The pleasure is entirely mine, I assure you, said Daniel. You have f proven yourself a most reclusive gentleman, Mr. . . . uh, forgive me. With all this dashing about your cover name has eluded me.

Ishikawa, informed the other. Masahiro Ishikawa.

Of course, of course. If we’re to keep everything in tune, I suppose it only proper to address you in that manner. Having you represent our interests during the coming affair, as well as those of Japan, is a stroke of fortune almost too good to be true. Here, shall we sit down and be comfortable? I’m certain John has filled you in on the essentials of what is in store. You no doubt have a number of questions I shall be happy to answer.

Puzzling over the need for a cover name, Miura could see no reason to equivocate. He said, No questions, Mr. Director.

Really . . ? Daniel’s smile came quickly, then he sobered. I’m sure you were informed how precipitately this unheard of opportunity presented itself. Frankly, it overwhelmed us popping up out of the blue so to speak. And when your government opted to have a truly distinguished gentleman of your prominence represent Nipponese interests it was, well, I’m sure it could be called the purest form of serendipity.

Mr. Miura-Matsuda-Ishikawa nodded gravely.

In point of fact we were dumbfounded, added the director in the nature of a confession, "to learn of the PRC’s decision to hold the conference in space. What with the lamentably depressed world economy created by their blasted space elevator system, I daresay it was an astute public relations ploy by China, yet in a deeper sense inviting multinational delegates to visit their heavenly sanctum sanctorum does smack of injecting painkiller prior to extracting one’s last remaining molar. I realize your employment on our behlf is by default secondary. First and foremost, no doubt, will be fulfilling an

Reviews for Sometimes the Dragon Wins

[William Walling · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"SOMETIMES THE DRAGON WINS
Average Customer Rating
Palmetto Reviews
Reviewer: Diana 09/17/2012
Sometimes the Dragon Wins is a wonderful science fiction novel. It can also be categorized as political conspiracy fiction. As most of us know, there have been talks in the past of building an elevator to the moon. This novel makes it a reality. China manages to build one first and takes over the world economically. That doesn’t sit well with western civilization so they feel it’s up to them to do something about it. This novel brings together spies, FBI agents, CIA agents, officials from Europe and so on to work as a team against a common enemy. William Walling puts into perspective what could happen if such an elevator was to ever be accomplished. I really enjoyed how Mr. Walling painted each person and place so I could see it all clearly in my mind’s eye and feel as if I was there walking and fighting next to the characters. It’s hard to remember the novel is fiction, he puts so much reality based information into it that it reads more like actual events. This is a page turner from the start to finish. I couldn’t stop reading even when I needed to. I highly recommend this book firstly for all the science fiction fans but also for the more political minded people. It’s a great read for anyone, really, who enjoys a good action, mystery book. You won’t regret it."